We had our longest day of driving today on this trip! We covered 600 miles (960k) in nine hours, and both feel shattered.
We are 270 miles from our final destination of Mesa, Arizona which we should accomplish in four hours. To say we will be relieved to get there is an understatement. Toque has been such a trooper during this whole trip. She is secured in her basket on the back seat and basically sleeps all the way. When we have swapped drivers, we get her out for a comfort stop and try to get her to have something to drink.
It was depressing for us when we put in part of our route, and it came up with 449 miles before you need to make a turn – rather soul destroying. We have to give it to them though, the roads make driving very easy, and the comfort stops are exceptional.
As we drove through El Paso which is tucked up right next to the Mexican border we got a very good view of the Trump wall. Not good enough view to take a photo of though. Just over the wall you could see the slums of Ciudad Juarez which is the town on the other side. It was pretty grim to look at. There was also border security along the freeway checking for illegal immigrants and also the possibility of hitchhiking prisoners which may have made a run for it. There are a noticeable number of prisons along the highway. The state with the most prisons is Texas with the sum total of 313. The US has the highest incarceration rate of any independent democracy in the world – not something to be proud of.
Popped into New Mexico which isn’t a new state for us as we have driven Route 66 through the area on a previous trip.
Final day tomorrow. We will give all the states and check the odometer reading to see just how far we have come in the 17 days since we left Calgary. We do know that since we left the cold white north, the poor city has had at least one dump of snow which measured a foot. That occurred a few days after we left. The temperatures have also plummeted. Cannot say we are missing it.
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